Ryan Tuerck finished on the podium at the opening round of Formula Drift over the weekend. He had a shot at the top, only to get stopped by a mechanical failure. Watch him join in with his crew and try to swap his seized diff in their allotted five minutes of time.

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — Today W8-powered manual wagon Volkswagen Passat ceded its title of "Sickest Passat Ever" to the 900 horsepower V8 Passat unveiled by Tanner Foust for the new season of Formula Drift.

So while the rest of Southeast Michigan was engrossed in the Dream Cruise, some Formula D drifters snuck into town and were hooning all across the grounds of Michigan Central Station, which some of you non-Detroit residents might recognize as this hulking monolith.

The first 86 Scion FR-S buyers are getting all sorts of special perks, as we were first to report. We just didn't know what the perks were until now. If you're not one of the first 86 buyers you may not want to keep reading.

Ryan Tuerck, of the very excellent "Off Seasons" video, has traded leafy parking lots for the sunny banking of Toyota Speedway. Here he gives you a sense of the lunacy going on behind the wheel at a Formula D drift competition.

Autocar UK's road test editor Steve Sutcliffe has a strange obsession of the sideways kind. His perverse purpose is to try and drift just about anything with wheels around his slice of test tarmac. His most recent offering to the tire gods is a diesel London Cab. Hit the jump to see the clip.

We caught up with professional drifter Vaughn Gittin Jr. and had him walk us around his Ford Mustang to show us what makes his trick drift car tick. Not only did we get a close-up look at the machine, he even took us for a quick spin around some cones conveniently placed in the parking lot. This was our second time…